Growing up in the desert taught me to look for beauty and wisdom in not-so-obvious people and places. These are my reflections as I try to live into that lesson in my family, in my church, in my politics and in the world.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

It's the "Why not?"

It's the "Why not?" that is the most infuriating, for within that phrase reside layers of racism, sexism, and white male entitlement. In this piece I will unpack that two-word question, engage Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald, and challenge Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price to do the right thing.

The Event

On the afternoon of Wednesday, December 21, 2016, Jacqueline Craig. the mother of a 7-year-old boy, called Fort Worth police to report that a man had assaulted her son for littering, according to news reports. Craig and her son are African Americans. The neighbor accused of assaulting her son is a white man. (According to news reports, the neighbor has admitted grabbing the child by the neck.)And you already know how this story is going to turn out, don't you? Right. As I write this, nothing has happened to the white neighbor, but the mother and her two daughters were arrested. And after the arrest, the cops checked her for outstanding warrants - something not routinely done with arrests -- and discovered the mom has some outstanding traffic violations, information they quickly shared with the media. Of course they did.Here's how the event unfolded.

"Relatives said that a man in their southwest Fort Worth neighborhood had grabbed the boy by the neck in an attempt to get him to pick up the trash," reported the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. A relative of the mother videoed the encounter. See the video here.

"The video shows the officer talking to both the man accused of assaulting Craig’s son and then to Craig. Craig tells the man that he should have alerted her if he believed her son had littered and that he didn’t have the right to put his hands on her son.

“Why don’t you teach your son not to litter?” the officer asks Craig.

“He can’t prove to me that my son littered,” Craig responded. “But it doesn’t matter if he did or didn’t, it doesn’t give him the right to put his hands on him.”

“'Why not?” the officer responds."

Why not?!!!!!!! "Why not?" !!!!!!!!!!

Implicit in that "Why not?" is this question - Why can't your neighbor assault your child any time he wishes, for any reason?There are layers within layers of things wrong with this white officer of the law asking a black mother why another white man shouldn't be allowed to put his hands on her 7-year-old son without being held to account. Let's unpeel those layers.

Within that phrase sits hundreds of years of women of all colors being publicly shamed and blamed by white men when they dare to speak up and out about wrongs being done to them or their children, when they demand that the law defend them too. But most of all, within that patronizing privileged phrase sit hundreds of years of white men doing whatever they damn well pleased to the bodies of black children, black women, black men. Within that phrase sits a sense of entitlement and privilege fed and nurtured by centuries of patriarchy and white privilege that meant one white man automatically supported the other white man at the expense of an justifiably aggrieved mother.

That's why that white officer of the law barely dealt with the reason he had been called to the scene -- the suspected assault of a child - and instead turned the full weight of the authority vested in him by the city of Fort Worth on the black child's mother, focusing all his scorn and outrage on her.

And that black mother reacted exactly as any other mother -- and most fathers -- would react at being asked that outrageous question. She got angry. Which, if you watch the video, was pretty clearly the officer's intent in goading her.The news report continued, "The exchange immediately grows heated with Craig telling the officer that his question made her angry and the officer replying he would take her to jail if she continued yelling at him."

Got that? The officer patronizes her, treats her complaint as worthless, blatantly calls her a bad mother, goads her, threatens her, and then, when she reacts, arrests her. And then arrests her daughters because they get angry too. Ms. Craig did the right thing in calling the police. Hell, if some man had grabbed my child by the throat, I'm not sure I'd have called the police before confronting and assaulting him. And if I had, I suspect I still wouldn't be in jail, because I'm white and my child is white.

Rude?

Fort Worth city officials say they are "disturbed and outraged" at the video, and they have acknowledged the office acted "inappropriately," and agree that investigating the possible assault of the child should have been the officer’s priority when he arrived at the scene.But Fort Worth Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald (a black man), speaking at a news conference at City Hall on Friday afternoon, "acknowledged that the officer acted rude but said, 'I can’t call [the incident] racism.

"'What I can say is that I noticed in the video that the officer was rude,” Fitzgerald said. “And there is a difference between rude and racist.”

Chief, you are right. This officer's behavior WAS rude, but that rudeness was caused by and rooted in racism and sexism. And I think you know it. Just as it's racism that is forcing you to be so measured and prudent, making you so carefully avoid the slightest appearance of being the dreaded "angry black man."

I get it -- but I hate it.

Because if we don't name it, we can't change it.

Mayor, make it right

So I am calling on Mayor Betsy Price to use her status as an elected official and her white privilege to name it. Have your police chief's back and say what he can't -- that this officer's behavior was racist and sexist and that it will not be tolerated in Fort Worth.

Then take appropriate action to back that statement up. Fire the officer.

And then apologize to Ms. Craig, her daughters, and most of all, her 7-year-old son.

If you believe it when you say Fort Worth is better than this, prove it.

About Me

Katie Sherrod is an independent writer, producer and commentator in Fort Worth, Texas.
She is the editor of and a contributor to "Grace & Gumption, Stories of Fort Worth Women", published by the TCU Press; and "Women of the Passion, a Journey to the Cross". Both are available at Amazon.com. She has been given many awards for her consistent advocacy of women's reproductive freedom and for her 25 years of writing about efforts to combat family violence. Her print media and broadcast awards include Best Newspaper Column, Best Radio Commentary and Best Interview/Talk Show from the Dallas Press Club, and the Exceptional Media Merit Award from the National Women's Political Caucus. She holds the Associated Press Managing Editors Award for feature writing, and the Texas Headliners Award for investigative reporting.
She was inducted into the Texas Women's Hall of Fame in 1987 for outstanding contributions in the field of communications, named one of Fort Worth's Outstanding Women in 1988 and Texas Woman of the Year in 1989.
She is married to the Rev. Gayland Pool. She has a daughter and two amazing grandsons.